Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [2]
I wiped a space on our table for Air. Howard's paper and ink and pen. The letters he composed were full of grand words. The woman Mary Toft has just now given birth to five praeternatural rabbits, all dead, a fact of which there is hitherto no instance in Nature. He pickled them in my sister Toft's jelly jars, numbered one, two, three, four, five, just as they were supposed to have come out of my womb. All I had to do was produce one more out of my body in front of a crowd of London doctors, and they would all believe in it. "Stupidity and knavery, that's what we can rely on," said Air. Howard, wiping his hands on a rag.
But nobody came, for all his letters.
After a week Air. Howard ran over from the inn with a notion that he would teach me to make my belly jump as if live creatures were sporting in it, which would be all the more impressive. Our children thought it a great game. Air. Howard sent off more letters. The woman Mary Toft has just now given birth to three more rabbits, one of which leaped in her body for all to see, for eighteen hours before it dud and came out, which was a great satisfaction to the curious.
But the weeks went by, and still nobody came to see me.
When Air. Howard knocked on our door, with a long face, I thought the game was over, and I was not sorry neither, though he might have given me a shilling for my trouble. But instead he said I must go in his chaise to Guildford, which would be more convenient for him to carry on the scheme.
At this I began to be afraid, but Joshua got out of bed and said I must go. His brother's wife could come in and see to the children, as she had none left of her own.
"What sport," said my sister Toft, who was to come with me as my nurse.
Mr. Howard kept writing letters all the way, though the ruts splashed ink on his lace cuff. There are three more rabbits come out of the woman Mary Toft's body, the sum being eleven, all which may be seen in jars at Guildford by any person of distinction who likes.
While he was resting his hand, I asked him, "How many rabbits, sir, could one woman of middling size be supposed to have in her body?"
But he said they were only small ones, and eleven was a good number.
I lay on the bed in Guildford and groaned and made my stomach go in and out so the sheets moved, just as I was instructed. I had to keep my eyes shut so as not to laugh. Some folks came in to see me at last. One pointed and said she could see the shape of a rabbit's paw, but her husband said it was clearly a tail. Others only stared, and one woman said it was a fraud and spat on the floor. Mr. Howard wouldn't charge any of them so much as a farthing. "Patience," he told my sister Toft; "our sights are set higher."
Joshua came to Guildford on Nat Tucker's cart one day. He told me I was a good woman, then lifted the lid of his basket a crack so I could smell the fresh rabbits he had brought.
"Is it not a great expense," I said in his ear, "when we could be feeding them to our children?"
But he shook his head, lightsome as ever, and said soon we would have the King's coin and dine on venison.
The morning I heard the jangle of a gentleman's carriage out in the courtyard, I felt so cold in my bones that I would have run all the way home to Godalming, if Mr. Howard had let me out the door.
I was to look weary and say little; that was easy. I kept my stays on, but loosened. The visitor was a foreign gentleman, a Mr. St. Andre, surgeon to the King himself. He felt my belly and remarked that it was barely swollen. Then he reached into my dress and squeezed my nipples to see what would come out.
Mr. Howard ran back from the inn at dinnertime, with sauce down his neck-kerchief, and told me not to fret. "St. Andre is no man-midwife, Alary; the only females he's seen close up are dead ones."
At that I started to shudder, but my sister Toft told me